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A 6 - The Oakville Beaver, W e d n e sd a y N o v e m b e r 14, 2001 EDITORIALS AM LETTERS THE llikfll.ir BEflfGK 467 Speers Rd,, Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-2809 Circulation: 845-9742 IAN OLIVER Publisher NEIL OLIVER Associate Publisher NORMAN ALEXANDER Editor KELLY MONTAGUE Advertising Director STEVE CROZIER Circulation Director TERI CASAS Office Manager MARK DILLS Production Manager RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director Metroland Printing, Publishing & Distributing Ltd.. includes: Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser, Alliston Herald/Courier, Arthur Enterprise News, Barrie Advance, Barry's Bay This Week, Bolton Enterprise, Brampton Guardian, Burlington Post, Burlington Shopping News, City Parent. Collingwood/Wasaga Connection, East York Mirror, Erin Advocate/Country Routes. Etobicoke Guardian, Flamborough Post, Georgetown Independent/Acton Free Press. Harriston Review. Huronia Business Times. Kingston This Week. Lindsay This Week. Markham Ecnomtet & Sun, Midland/Penetanguishine Mirror, Milton Canadian Champion, Milton Shopping News, Mississauga Business Times. Mississauga News, Napanee Guide. Newmarket/Aurora Era-Banner, Northumberland News, North York Mirror, Oakville Beaver, Oakville Shopping News, Oldtimers Hockey News, Orillia Today, OsNwa/Whitby/Clarington Port Perry This Week. Owen Sound Tribune, Palmerston Observer, Peterborough This Week, Picton County Guide, Richmond Hill/Thomhill/Vaughan Liberal. Scarborough Mirror, Stouffville/Uxbridge Tribune, Forever Young. City of York Guardian cca a Ontario Community | Newspapers Association f^TVT A Canadian Circulations Audit Board Member THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: Recognized for Excellence by ft O N l E T B U ET T E W e l c Canadian Community Newspapers Association The Oakville. Milton and District Jn i g e B e lF u n d P C K V E L E I N E S S K T H E A R T S | oakville galleries | " " f e - SK » Suburban Newspapers of America TV AUCTION O N T A R I O ffr k d OicvTnp Children's Choir kM M Drive Clean program punishes the poor W hen the Province decided to bring in its Drive Clean program for motor vehicles, the idea was to get polluting cars and trucks off the road. But the sys tem frequently punishes the wrong peo ple. It's not The Clean Drive unusual to be following program was large trucks brought into force to spew ing colum ns of get polluting vehicles black smoke off the road. But just out o f their who suffers when a stacks. N ot only does the car fails an exhaust cause emission test? particulate pollution but it also stinks. Where, we wonder, are the Ministry o f Transportation people to nail the owners and drivers o f these pol luters? As anyone who has received a letter in the mail for a car licence renewal can attest, the Drive Clean warning often comes with this form. The idea isn't a bad one overall, but why must owners of cars as new as four years old have to pay a further $30 to have their basically new cars tested. We wonder if any o f these vehicles have failed, given the kind of pollution controls manufacturers have installed on these cars. It's nothing more than a money grab from the Province in the form of PST. And here's the most disturbing com ponent to this whole affair. It used to be that if your car failed the emission test and you spent $200 upgrading it and you still failed...after spending another $30 for a new test, they you could still get your licence plates. All o f that has changed now so that you have to pay $400 in upgrades before you can drive again. So here's the issue: W ho wants to drive a car so decrepit that it will fail an emission test? The answer is someone who can't afford a newer car, in other words, the poor. And if their lowly car fails the test, what then? Can they get to work? Would they buy a better car if they could? O f course. Surely there must be some allowance made for these people, a kind o f means test before punishing them for not mak ing enough money. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Oakville Beaver welcomes your comments. All letters must be typed, signed and include the writer's address and phone number. Send to: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, THE OAKVILLE BEAVER 467 SPEERS RD,, OAKVILLE, ONT. L6K 3S4 m m of mi; week Hospital experience less than adequate Friday Nov. 2, 2001 started o ff as anoth er normal day. I got up to get ready for work, being new to the O akville area, I get up earlier then usual. Once I was ready to go, I w ake m y chil dren for school. My son was at the dentist at Hopedale M all the night before for an extraction. It was unsuccessful, as the freezing w ouldn't take due to infection o f the m olar where the filling had fallen out. W hen I woke him , his face was sw ollen to ju st below the eye. Instead o f heading to work, I decided to take my son to O akville Trafalgar M em orial H ospital. I arrived at the hospital by 8:20 am. I sat in a room w aiting for a doctor to look at my son for five and a half hours. In that tim e the sw elling had reached his lower eyelid, and had started to turn red in colour. The doctor inform ed me that he had tried to contact the dental surgeon but it was his day off, and perhaps he could be shopping. He w asn't sure if he w anted to adm inister IV A ntibiotics, but had m en tioned the passing thought to me. The doc tor told me to go hom e and watch the sw elling, and if it gets any worse to come back, I m entioned at that time, the swelling on my son's face had w orsened as I waited for treatm ent and was now turning red. At 2:15 PM, I left the hospital with my son, still untreated to my satisfaction. In the parking lot I saw a lady leaving with her son. I asked her "how long did you take for treatm ent, and w hat was the treatm ent?" Her reply was "less then three hours and a sprained ankle". I called the dental office that had w orked on my son the night before to find they were also closed. I called the yellow pages to a few m axillofacial surgeons, and finally reached through to the P rofessional Building in Credit Valley. They said they could see my son in 20 minutes. I arrived there for 3 p.m ., we saw the doctor, and he explained what he could do for us. It was going to cost me more than I could afford, but what is the cost o f your child's com fort worth? Finally, a medical em ployee who was a professional. The extraction was alm ost $400, the antibiotics, the parking fees at the Oakville hospital; this day alm ost totalled $500. I am new to the O akville area as of S e p t.l, 2001. I cannot believe w hat I had to go through to get some m edical help for my child. W hen swelling from infection is in the face and reaching tow ards the eye, it can go to the child's brain and cause serious side effects or cost his life. The services I w as offered at the O akville hospital were non-existent. I since found out that the hospital doesn't have a dental unit. The m edical personnel on duty could have told me upon signing in that they did n't have a dental unit and saved my time, and parking fees. They could have referred me to another hospital that offers these services, I am appalled at the lack o f value and com pas sion for a child's life at the O akville hospi tal, and it is a m edical joke. It gives a whole new m eaning to a sick sense of humour. TRACEY NELLIS Quality of education continues to erode It's hard to find gainfully employed people today who don't work hard for a living. Long hours, tired faces and mouths to feed are part of most family rou tines. So I won't complain that the baby cried at 3 a.m. because my wife was so kind to look after our little 9month-old that night. I was tired that night, after working all day long and later taking a course at night. Every Monday night I attend a class as part of my professional development. The next day it's back to work like most people. My day starts at about 7:50 a.m. The staff meeting started at 3 p.m. and finished at 4:30 p.m. I collected my work and headed home at about 5 p.m. A quick dinner and then I worked Jo r another 2.5 hours marking papers and enter ing marks. Another 90 minutes preparing the OAC test for the next day, and then some review o f notes in preparation for tomorrow's lesson. Yes. I am a second ary school business teacher, and no, I don't expect any sympathy in regards to the workload. I chose my pro fession and I enjoy teaching. I know how hard people work out in the `real world' as I too have worked there for over eight years prior to teaching. However, as a teacher I am concerned that parents really don't know what is happening in education. Are you getting the quality education that the government has spent millions of dollars promoting and fiddling with? Have you asked your son or daughter what they think of the TAP program that disrupts their classes every other week? Here's a quick quiz for you. 1. Do you know what TAP is? 2. Are you familiar with the new levels of achieve ment in the secondary panel? 3. Are you aware that some courses are only half courses and are taught by two different teachers? 4. Did you know that in many boards, classes are being cancelled on a daily basis because there are not enough supply teachers? 5. Are you aware that some supply teachers are not qualified teachers? 6. Do classes really have 22 students in them as the government boasts? I have spent a considerable amount of time over the years at our school developing a business program in marketing and business management. Unfortunately, one of the problems is that we have more classes now that we have text books; 50 students and 20 circa 1987 text books. The funding doesn't exist presently to replace all text books for the two classes. Finally, what prompted this letter is the letter I received from the Ontario College o f Teachers. Please understand that this College is a government initiative, which dictates policies; teachers have little or no input in the policies the College sets. The letter I received the other day states that it has given me `notice' that I must take 14 courses over the next five years to maintain my certification as a teacher. Unfortunately, at this time, the college doesn't know what the courses are, where they will be held, who will pay for them, who will teach them, but the letter went out to 40,000 teachers all the same. If I am to fulfill the 14 courses as required by the College, I certainly will need to fid time in my alreadyhectic schedule. Unfortunately, there will be areas that I will have to cut back, such as our school store that has been tremendously successful; using different formats for testing; cutting back on `extra' help. I will have lit tle option but to find time by doing some or all of the (See `Teacher' page A7) Downsizing hits children hard Re: System fails special needs students Oakville Beaver Wed. Nov. 7. I can't help but disagree vehemently with your conclusion that special needs student Emmalyn Garside is a loser in the battle between the province and the teachers. The Oakville Beaver needs to take off its ideological blinders and face the facts. Ontario's teachers walked out in 1997 to protest the impending effects of Bill 160. This bill allowed the Tories to implement tremendous cuts to our public education system. These cuts have in turn forced school boards across the province to cut into their special edu cation programs. Our province is now chock full of children like Emmalyn. These children are victims of big government downsizing. The bot tom line has left them behind. You're absolutely correct in stating that the provincial government has turned its back on public education. But you're absolutely wrong to blame the teachers for the cuts. TOM KOPERWAS Oakville trees deserve better fate As I write this letter, my room is engulfed with the sickening sound of my neighbour's healthy, mature ash tree being cut down. A tree that once provided shade in the summer, a gorgeous yellow display in the fall, a bird habitat and oxygen all year round has been reduced to firewood and sawdust. This past summer our short street has seen the loss of two spruces and a linden tree as well. All three trees w ere thriving and mature. They were irreplaceable living assets to our street. I cannot imagine the mind set o f someone who would commit such an act of destruc tion. In one case the tree was removed because its leaves were dropping onto a car parked underneath it. I write this letter to urge the residents of Oakville to protect our trees. If you have space on your lot, please, plant more. I hope that the Towm will work hard to enact a by-law to safe-guard one of our most precious resources, our urban trees. ANDY KRANTZ Reunion for 4 Wing Attention all students who attended 4 Wing Senior High School in Baden, Germany during the 1960s. A reunion is being planned. Let other former 4 Wingers know. Details at: http://members.home.net/4winghigh/home or phone 519-421-1612. Helen Bain, Woodstock, Ontario. Pud By STEVE NEASE